The first collaborative act between the Buried Claw and the mushroom dwarves was to fill the cavern I'd lost the kidnapped dwarf in with traps. Between the Kobold’s ingenuity and the mushroom dwarves’ grim persistence the entire cave was filled with dozens of opportunities for any interloper to die at the slightest misstep. Overall it seemed like the team up between the two was going to give them a good shot at surviving.

I spent the time they were working on that brooding and thinking. I hadn’t really failed at anything since I’d gotten to Tu’reyne. Or questioned anything. Even after my failure I still didn't really have a strong desire for reflection. I could feel my brooding start to fade much quicker than I felt it should’ve. Something was wrong with me, but I didn’t currently have the means to figure out what it was.

I told Elle and everyone else who asked what I saw. The thing that took their person blended with the walls, moved faster than I could and escaped through the salt water running through the cave.

“I've never heard of stonemen that swim,” said Zevrac when I finished.

“True, but blending into the caves is something they’re very good at, and the few we’ve run into don’t necessarily represent them as a whole,” said Elle.

“Either way, we need to figure out where they’re coming from. Did the Buried Claw compare notes on that?” I asked.

“Yes, we’ve narrowed down the general area. I figured Zevrack can guide us.”

Zevrack nodded up and down enthusiastically. “I look forward to claiming new territory for the tribe.”

“Well. Let’s get moving.”

We took a brief pit stop at the pantry for me to trade out my pouches that were now filled with mostly dissolved spice bombs for new ones. Then we went back into the caverns. It wasn’t long before we left behind all the caves and tunnels I’d recognized and were moving through areas that were totally new to me. I could tell we were heading somewhere between the kobold and the dwarf territories, but also more downward in tunnels below where I’d been before. Every once in awhile we’d stop for Zevrack to claw up some dirt and taste it or for Elle to add to a series of maps she was making in case we got lost. There were also a lot of times where we’d reach an area only barely large enough for me to shimmy through and I’d need to be pulled through or in one case receive a thorough greasing with something Elle referred to as ‘grub oil’ which smelled disturbingly sweet.

After several hours of this the entire character of the caves changed. We were no longer anywhere near the sun. There were no more small patches of grass or trees. Even mushrooms were fewer and further between. The caverns I’d been in had felt confining and different, but these were truly claustrophobic. After another hour we started seeing little signs of civilization. Caves that had been carved out rather than were natural, paths worn down by heavy boots, and bridges built across chasms.

We entered a wider cave and Zevrack sniffed the air. I could hear a strange noise. A kind of dragging skittering that was slowly getting louder. Zevrack pulled off his pack and started rifling through it. He pulled out a long thin piece of paper and spread it out across the front of where the noise was coming from. I readied a bident, and I noticed that Elle pulled a sickle. She was holding it in a surprisingly competent stance.

I looked at her questioningly.

“I can gain skills by watching others. It’s slow, but I wound up gaining a level in swords yesterday.”

I flashed her a smile and readied my bident. A few moments after Zevrack had finished his trap a dozen of what I can only describe as giant cockroaches swarmed out of the tunnel. The sticky paper immediately ensnared three of them, but the rest were crawling along the walls and ceiling and so had no issue making it into the room with us.

I threw my bident at one of them on the wall and it slammed into it, impaling it on the rock. I then drew my shortsword and put myself in the middle of them. I wasn’t a particularly tanky person, but compared to Elle and Zev I felt I was the closest we had.

The insect intelligence of the group turned to me as I neared them and they all moved in my direction.

I slammed my foot into the one nearest to me and it made a sickening crunching sound as my boot sank into it. One of them leapt onto my arm and started biting at me, but it couldn’t get through my leather armor. I grabbed it by the leg and threw it onto the sticky paper. It landed upside down, and struggled with the rest of them, it’s legs flailing as it tried to move.

I saw Zevrack grab one and bite its head off in a swift motion. The noise it made was indescribably unpleasant.

Elle gave a little screech as one leapt at her, but she managed to catch it with the point of her sickle and impale it before it reached her.

The remaining four leapt toward me, almost in unison. I sliced one in half in midair, but the other three landed on me and immediately went for the exposed flesh of my face. I threw myself onto the ground and rolled, managing to shake two off of me, but the last one managed to bite into my cheek, drawing blood.

I grabbed it and slammed it onto the floor with a strength born of pain and disgust and it splattered across the ground. Zevrack tossed one of the remaining ones onto his trap and the last one skittered away after Elle gave it a nasty cut along its carapace.

Once it was done I made my way over to the trapped ones and ended them quickly. Glue traps were inhumane, though I obviously didn’t hold Zevrack to that standard, nor did I think it was unfair to use them on violent bugs the size of cats. Once it was done I took out a small handkerchief I’d taken from the pantry and began wiping the blood and viscera from myself.

Zevrack started cutting up the corpses and retrieving his trap, and Rockelle poked at one of the critters with a stick while her eyes glowed, pausing to take notes on them.

I was about to ask what those things were, but chose to check my notifications for an answer.

Congratulations! You’ve slain twelve Cucacho (Various Lvl) with your party! You gain 300 xp!

Congratulations! You’ve increased the skill Barehanded!

That seemed high for shared XP. It would seem that it’s weighted in some way. Either that or those beasties yield a high amount of XP for their difficulty. I looked over at Elle and Zevrack who were both staring in the distance in such a way I could tell they were looking at their sheets. Zevrack looked contemplative, but Elle was positively beaming.

I heard a noise and gestured at the two of them to break them from their sheets. They looked at me in askance, and I gestured at the tunnel the noise was coming from. Zevrack went to reach into his pack for a trap, but I held up a hand to stop him. It was people talking that I was hearing. We squeezed into a tunnel off the side ducked down. After a few moments four stonemen and two stonewomen appeared. They looked over the corpses, poking and prodding at them, then began yelling and talking to one another.

In the dark of this deeper portion of the caverns they were even more difficult to make out, and as I strained to see them I realized there was a faint glow coming from behind me. I turned around quickly to find that the glow was coming from Rockelle. Her ears were glowing and she had a focused look on her face that I took as a good reason not to question her. After a few more moments of speaking the stonemen walked back into the cavern they came from. I listened until I was certain they were gone.

“We’re clear. They should be too far away to hear us now.”

Zevrack let out his breath in such a way that I could tell he’d been holding it the entire time.

I looked at Elle, whose ears were still glowing.

She looked up at me. “I just leveled, and got a new ability. It let’s me comprehend languages at will. I was using it to understand what they were saying.”

“And?”

“They’re patrolling. Looking for anyone that would threaten their village. They left to go report what they’d found to their chief.”

“Well, let’s follow them. Seems like the quickest way to find out where they’ve been coming from.”

They didn’t leave a trail exactly, but after heading into the tunnel they’d come from for a while I started to pick up fragments of conversation and other noises of civilization that I was able to follow. Zevrack kept looking for side passages and things to hide behind as we walked. As we got closer we had to use those spots more and more to avoid groups of stonemen walking about.

Zevrack found a small tunnel off to the side he said smelled right and we began shimmying through it. As we went I could hear a kind of chanting and drum and when we finally found a gap to peek through, the stonemen’s city came into view. I could hear Rockelle gasp as it did.

All I was able to bring myself to say was, “Shit.”

The town was roughly twice the size of Mykas and bustling with activity. There were dozens of fires burning a strange soft green flame and I could see a large number of men and women with weapons dancing and chanting in the city’s center. They were moving in time with a drum beat and there was a kind of manic energy to the air. It was a war party, and from what I could tell, Mykas wasn’t ready for it.

I looked around at the rest of the city. Unlike Mykas, all the buildings were carved into the walls rather than built in the open. The lighting all seemed to be from those small torches, and it made the place seem gloomy and mysterious. Though, for all I knew to them the torches were bright and comforting, not like I had the same eyes they did.

In general the town seemed organized and focused on defense. The stonemen were a warlike culture in the same way the mushroom dwarves were a communal one. I wondered how they’d brought this much of a culture with them from another world. Elle had said that people’s memories were usually gone when they arrived and all that was left was impressions. How different were they with only the impressions and not the memories?

I looked at Elle. Her eyes, ears, and nose were glowing and she was furiously scribbling in her notepad. I looked at what she was writing, but of course it was all in dwarvish. Zevrack was also looking out onto the city intently, one claw gently scratching along the length of his chin.

“We need to go. Mykas and the Buried Claws need to be warned.”

Zevrack nodded, and Rockelle made a few more quick notes before looking up at me and nodding as well.

We slowly backed out of the tunnels, and got back on our way to the city. A battle was coming. One we weren’t prepared for.